I must tell my tale in GIFs because that hasn’t been overdone and worn out on the internet yet.
This is how I have felt for the last 2 1/2 weeks, trying to name our new dog:
I thought I’d figured it out last week but alas, a few days ago, I un-named her again. I love the word “zucca” but after several days of making that word with my face, including calling it out at the park, I realized it just isn’t right for this particular dog or my particular face that makes words. It made my teeth feel weird, that Z sound with the K sound after it. Does that make any sense? I told this to Rupert Not His Real Name and he started questioning his wife-choice.
He grimly tolerated my flakiness about the naming of the girl dog, understanding that I’ll literally lose sleep at night if I feel the name is wrong. But even strong men have limits to their patience and after the third or fourth change, he started pointedly calling her Girl Dog Who Deserves a Name and doing this a lot:
Late last night I lay awake in bed in a stark cold sweat hating myself for being so indecisive (that is not a condition with which I usually suffer and I find indecisiveness in others excruciating), and then it came to me. My friends and I had already considered Serenity, Shiny, Kaylee, and Jayne because Best Show Ever, but for some unholy reason none of us had uttered the obvious.
Well finally my brain uttered it in the cold loneliness of the night:
Right? Right?? You’re gorram right I’m right. She even looks like that GIF.
My relief is enormous. I don’t even care who doesn’t like that name, I feel fantastic.
…….
I followed a link to a site yesterday about people’s stories of their adopted shelter dogs, and the headline was something like, “Proving that shelter dogs can be very loving.” Whut? Was that in doubt? Are there real people who have the idea that dogs you adopt from a shelter are not as good in some way as dogs you buy from a breeder or get from a friend? Is this a thing? Almost every dog I’ve ever had came from a shelter and they’ve all been wonderful, trusting, trustworthy, magnificent beasts. These current two, Primo and Firefly, are the only ones I’ve adopted as adults instead of as puppies and I suppose that was risky and maybe I’ve just gotten lucky but damn if they’re not the most delightful dogs I’ve ever had.
Also, is it just me, or does anyone else dislike that it’s now common to refer to all dogs adopted from shelters as “rescues” and every act of shelter-adoption a “rescue”? It seems to me this wasn’t the term we used the last time I adopted a dog from a shelter (Sunny in 2001); the last I remember, “rescue” was used only for groups that fostered dogs of a certain breed, like a Rottweiler Rescue group. I understood that. I don’t understand calling every shelter-adopted dog “rescued”; I think it sounds a little grandiose, a little Look At How Heroic I Am.
I just can’t use that word to describe the transactions that occurred when we took Primo out of his Italian shelter and Firefly out of her Texan one. The truth is that Primo rescued me from what was becoming a rather grim case of depression, and Firefly is a gift of pure light and joy. She makes me smile and laugh more in a single day than I did in weeks about a year ago.
Somehow I managed to be taking video of them playing the back yard the first time I ever saw Firefly freak the eff OUT. She’s been more and more active since all her stitches came out last week but yesterday she achieved new heights of full-on spaz. Good lord:
About an hour later, they’d both calmed down and Primo was the impeccable Italian gentleman that he is, sharing his favorite stick because that is what one does for una piccola signorina: